Oh dear I totally forgot to update this thread...But you're right, the drones control very very differently from real ones. I did consider the idea of making a physically correct/plausible rig but would have been a lot of work and could have hurt player experience. Now gravity doesn't affect the drone body and the attached engines and all the movement characteristics are produced by very simple parameters.

As for the AO, well in that video that's all Lighmass. I did come up with a medium range AO solution for the drone, to prevent it looking detached from the scene in indirectly lit areas: http://zspline.net/temp/DynamicAODemo.mp4

I've reached a point where I'm comfortable releasing the next version, v0.54.It's still low on content (only the starting room looks decent) but the gameloop works so hopefully this release will give an idea about what I'm aiming at.

This game is not meant to be a commercial product but a vessel for me to learnthe engine and experiment with unusual ideas. One such idea is the gamepad-mousehybrid controls: While a gamepad only control scheme is available, I strongly recommendhaving the left hand on a x360 controller for analog movement while the right handon the mouse for looking and interactions. (Keyboard based movement technicallyworks but not fun.) I'll try to get Leap Motion and Razer Hydra working as well, forthe benefit of the dozens of people who have any of those devices.

The other thing is that I really went to town with diegetic UIs: There is no HUDor any kind of gamey menu or tutorial. All the information you need to know is partof the game's world, including the controls and game mechanics.They might need some deciphering but I hope that if you read everythingcarefully then you'll learn everything you need, plus clues about the background storyand perhaps you'll also find easter eggs. This makes the first couple of minutes playa bit like a hidden object/room escape game. You've been warned. (Just to be safe I also included the control layout in the readme.txt.)

In February I'll start publishing articles detailing the inner workings: special effects,materials, game logic, asset authoring, etc.In the meantime please give the game a try and let me know what you think.